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Time Out

“Park by the shrink-wrapped airplane. It says park by the shrink-wrapped airplane.”

“Whoa,” we both said, as we pulled into the lot. “A shrink wrapped airplane.”

A little later…

“Here are the things I can think of that suck about this gig,” said Pete. He paused. He was eating a prime rib sandwich, I had a plate of perfectly cooked salmon. We both had cocktails. “Yeah, I got nothing.”

“Write that down and email it to me, I’ll put in on the blog.”

We were playing a wedding reception at the Museum of Flight. It was our final gig of a three show weekend. The food was amazing, the sound in the room was great, and it was a super cool venue — we were surrounded by displays and artifacts from the history of early flight.

This party was the last in a string of gigs that did not suck. We played for a friend of Ed’s at gorgeous cabin on an island in Puget Sound — the place had an unbeatable view and there was home made pie with ice cream and macadamia nuts. We played Key Arena — well, okay, we played right outside Key Arena for the Space Needle’s Birthday Party. We’re going to take it as our first stadium gig, you can’t take that away from us. We played a few outdoor events — Jim hooked us up at the Sand Sculpting Championships (that exists!) and Ed booked us for the Madison Park Art Walk. We got a little sunburned, we got fed great food, we made new friends, and we had a great time at every single show.

And now, we’re going to take a couple of weeks off. Some of us are off to exotic locations, some of us have our heads down in day jobs, some of us are doing both of those things. I’m not going to lie, it feels like a long time for us to spend apart, but I’m also not too concerned about it — plus, we have a string of fall shows on the calendar. I anticipate that a couple of weeks of solo woodshedding will mean we show up at the next practice full of ideas about new tunes. (My money is on Ed showing up with charts for Won’t Get Fooled Again.)

Sometime back I was at Georgetown Music to pick up some gear. I got talking to the owner about the band and a possible gig.

“We’ve got a tent, it’s kind of small, can you guys share a small space? You get along?”

“I think we’ll be okay. We like each other well enough.”

“Oh, that’s right! You’re a ukulele band! That’s the happiest instrument on the planet! You guys probably have a better chance than most of sticking together!”